When a premier manufacturer of very large hydraulic equipment for the oil and gas industry needed to refit an automated test system for their hydraulic cylinders, they turned to Sentient Revolution to develop the software.
We developed cRIO-based electronic controls and software to automate the testing of 75 ft long, 20,000 psi hydraulic cylinders. The cylinders are used in the oil and gas industry to raise and lower drilling masts. The system safely and efficiently controls multiple hydraulic pumps and valves while it monitors multiple sensors to control and test a variety of hydraulic cylinders weighing up to several tons and generating forces of tens of tons.
We developed our test automation software in LabVIEW Real-time and LabVIEW FPGA targeted to a cRIO 9068 system. Our software gathers data and performs position control over the full stroke of the cylinder in order to perform end-of-line verification testing of the client's product. Test reports are automatically generated in PDF and Word format and are made available to the end user of the product. Operator control of the automated test system is available via the Windows-based HMI. A web-based GUI for visual real-time monitoring of the test system is available to any device with a modern web-browser on the client's intranet.